Southern Living: Can't Beat the Eats!

 

As a legal fellow with the United Auto Workers, I spent a lot of time bumping along dirt roads in the middle of the American South. Paired up with another organizer, we'd drive from house to house, crisscrossing the back woods of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama to talk to auto workers about the Gospel of Unionism. I have a friend that said I'm like a kitty in a paper bag, but I honestly really enjoyed this part of my job. Regardless of the doors shut in our faces or the veiled threat of guns & dogs the next time we show on someone's "goddamn fucking lawn," there's just something great about getting to know people and hearing their stories. Yes, these people make decent money, especially for the standard of living in these areas, but no one goes to work to get hurt. Or to be told that the company will take care of them...until the day comes when it just sidelines them simply because there are eager young people ready to work for much less.

It was a hard sell, to be sure. I would talk to a man about the security that forming a union provides, and all he had to do was to point to the beautiful homes behind him and say, "The company bought me those." Collective action problems aside, we were just so outgunned. My partner and I would drive around for eight or nine hours a day and on a good day, probably six of the fifteen people we try to see would be home. And out of those six, maybe two would want to talk. Our biggest impact was really that our presence in town kept the company on its toes. As soon as news got out that the UAW was in town, the company would dole out minor promotions, give small bumps to salaries. So we do some good just by being there, in a way.

Fried pork chop, cornbread, rice, and mixed veggies at Christine's Backporch in Jackson, Mississippi

That's the ambling and the working, but I also became known for picking out sweet sweet places for lunch. Armed with Yelp and with help from locals, we definitely had some good eats. Below was my first Southern meal, and it was at Christine's Backporch in Canton, MS. True to its name, I think it was Christine who welcomed us into her home and we sat in a converted living room to wait for the food. Southern cuisine gets ragged on for its grease, its calorific-ness, and the denial of vegetables as a food group. Not that it wasn't true for the most part, but (a) YOLO and (b) I just ended up having the food over the course of two meals (as well as hitting up the hotel gyms as often as I could).

My first stop was in Jackson, Mississippi:

The above was post-lunch gorging at Two Sisters in Jackson, MS. Let's skip the usual accolades about the amazing fried chicken and move right on to the bourbon bread pudding balls. I definitely had a hefty scoop of those things and I don't think I could see straight on the road afterward due to the sugar/tastiness.

When I first posted about having sushi in Jackson, Mississippi, friends made fun of me: "Did you get the Redneck roll? Is the California roll still called that there?" To my surprise, since the Nissan execs roam this biodome, stay in the hotels, and invariably have to eat, there is actually a small cluster of Japanese restaurants that I found up to par or better. The influx of Japanese investment meant also that an Asian boy wandering around town attracted attention. Hotel managers would greet me with a cheery "こんにちは" and Japanese restaurants would bring out their staff to greet me, along with a free appetizer. I wasn't about to tell them that I was in fact in town on behalf of the union!

For one of the weekends, two UAW international interns and I piled into a car to drive to New Orleans. 

India House was the hostel I settled on and it turned out to have a lot of character, even if I was plagued by mosquitoes all night. It was a tad far from Bourbon street, but the cost ($16 a night, I believe) was the selling point.

And yes, we got up early before our bayou tour to pick up breakfast at Cafe du Monde. Honestly? Not quite impressed, but this is totally due to my bias for 牛脷酥 and 沙翁, which are airier and fluffier.

The bayou tour kept making me think of Jurassic Park since there were these giant bitey lizards who seemed to appear whenever marshmallows and hot dogs appeared. These things are massive, and whenever one surfaced, we'd all rush from one side of the boat to another. We had brief looks at the destruction from Katrina, and I learned that bananas are bad juju for ships?

The Garden District was one of my favorite parts of this trip, simply because it was a perfectly sunny day, just muggy enough to make you relaxed and sleepy. But the most important part was that all the sweet olive trees were making the whole neighborhood smell like THE BEST THING EVER. I don't know why I didn't think about buying a local candle or something that carries the scent, but we definitely ran around looking for patches where the trees were showering it down.

And then there was the gay area (not that New Orleans as a whole doesn't feel like a Big Gay City). It was amusing to have people from work warn me against this particular area "because that's where there are a lot of men *wink." I did a brief barhop of the offerings here, and got caught up in a conversation with local gays about how the New Orleans gay scene was better than SF's. Since we were on the second-floor patio overlooking all the Bourbon St. festivities and random people were buying me drinks (hello, only Asian for miles), I was almost inclined to be a traitor and agree.

Merman is a cute twink until you realize he's holding an axe bigger than his chest and a skull. Wait, it's a (mer)manpurse. 

And we saw a lot of graveyards. Gorgeous and maze-like, nothing much more to add except that you need to see some of these monuments people built for themselves to live in after they die.

My second stop was in Tennessee, where I actually ended up spending the most time. Lebanon, TN is known for having the first Cracker Barrel ever. That's all. But it's close enough to Nashville and to the plant in Smyrna.

I did take some time to do some hiking. Trails are definitely not as clearly marked or paved as in California, which was a good and bad thing. On the plus side, I definitely felt like I was IN NATURE, but the downside was that I kept getting sidetracked on animal paths. The specific features in Cedars of Lebanon also led me to believe that the sinkholes and small pockmarks in the rocks would spawn small legions of goblins. I ran into another hiker and we both screamed briefly before we agreed to walk together so as to not freak each other out with breaking twigs.

Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Lebanon, Tennessee

And one of the last trips I did with the UAW was to a conference in Chicago to discuss precarious work in China. It was a good way to wrap up my year, and I realized how much international policy work I'd ended up soaking up. 

Obligatory Cloud Gate pictures. Everyone calls it the Bean and it amused me to no end that the artist Anish Kapoor responded to that nickname as "completely stupid."

Hong Kong: Home

As the last part of my Asia trek, I got to make a quick stop in Hong Kong to see family and to visit with a few NGOs that work with labor activists in China. Such a frenzied three day stay, but I was glad to suddenly be in a big modern city after Jakarta. I definitely threw down my luggage and sprinted for the closest Chinese charcuterie rice plate joint. O roast duck and BBQ pork!

Using Cantonese in a professional setting to discuss labor policy was an intense experience because it was stressful to figure out how to say something like "collective bargaining." But after picking up terms through osmosis from my first few conversations, the rest of the day was still tiring but manageable.

I realize that siu mai is not really what Tim Ho Wan (cheapest Michelin star restaurant in the world) is known for, and the fried BBQ buns were all kinds of delicious. HOWEVER, these were probably among the most well-done siu mai I've ever had. I had gotten up early to get in the line that wrapped around the block in Mong Kok, gotten a number, and then ran off to have a pre-breakfast of jook and cheung fun before racing back. Fast metabolism, don't ever leave me please.

I really liked the area of Mong Kok where my hotel was located. It was right by all the eateries (and pet shops?) and the MTR stops were only a few minutes away. The two pictures I took above were Mong Kok before the city woke up since I had to get up at the arse crack of dawn to go renew my Hong Kong identification card. Not surprisingly, the immigration officials in Hong Kong are downright friendly compared to their counterparts in the United States. There were smiles and there were ganbares for working on behalf of workers. My aunt was awesome enough to come make sure the whole process went okay, and she even brought me a chiffon roll and a Vitasoy.

After our quick government interaction, my grandparents showed up and we got a second breakfast of fish jook and cheung fun. I hadn't seen them in about seven or eight years, and like the adorable old people they are, they look exactly the same. 

Filled with carbs, we then planned out our trip to Tian Tan Buddha out on Lantau Island. 

The fog was so dense that it became a game of which grandparent I would lose to the mist monsters first. And we had no idea where the giant statute was until we were in front of it. Eventually I corralled them both and we plunged into the fog together. I don't know why I forget that it's not worth the money to see the museum inside the statue. The pinnacle of the tour is a view into a chamber of thick glass where they have the    physical baubles that remain when monks' bodies are burnt?

Me and Grandma!

Me and the happy brood of relatives on my Mom's side. We had just had a lot of dim sum, so mmm.

Above the last meal I had in Hong Kong with my aunt Galaxy and my grandparents before jetting back to the States! 

I sometimes wonder how life would have been different if my parents hadn't left in 1990 for San Francisco. My parents often point out that if we had stayed, I probably wouldn't have gotten into one of the universities in Hong Kong since it's just such an intense crush of people all vying for too few spots. 

And then I think, "But the dim sum!"

Indonesia Manis

Before I left for my quick jaunt to Southeast Asia, I had just finished Eat, Pray, Love. Yes, cheesy book about first world white lady problems, but I still got something out of it. Even if part of it was just amusement at my February travel mapping vaguely onto a microcosmic version of Elizabeth Gilbert's trek. I spent Eat week in Tennessee filling up on Meat and Twos, always going for mac n' cheese if they had it.

There's something adorable about the confusion on someone's face when you ask them not to put cheesy sauce on your overcooked broccoli. "No...cheesy...sauce?"

Pray time was obviously Thailand, where I walked to every wat and chedi in sight, feeling as spiritual as my cynical-leaning self is likely to get. I flicked water on myself from lotus blossoms for good luck, wai'd the heck out of the people I worked with, and did my best to reflect on where I wanted my life to go.

So Indonesia was supposed to be Lovin' and I was going to exit stage right with an older Italian ex-pat on his speedboat (spoiler alert). I was actually pretty excited to be in Jakarta to see my friend Rex (the girl on the far right in the picture above) since I had spent most of the month basically walking around either Tennessee or Thailand on my own, with a quick boop back into San Francisco to see the boy I was dating at the time. Yes, I interacted with a ton of people in the meantime, but seeing a college friend in her natural habitat is on a whole other level.

My most memorable moment here was finding out that there was no number to call for the police or fire department. People at work laughed at me, and friends there cackled at me. "Why would you want to call the police? They'd just show up and you'd have even more problems." "But what do you do if your house is on fire?" "You either put it out yourself or you watch it burn." I had been pretty excited about having a cell phone just in case I ran into hooligans in Jakarta, but no such luck.

Kopi Luwak

I finally had civet butt coffee. Kopi luwak is coffee brewed from beans that have been eaten by a civet and then pooped out. Someone then has to go out and pick up the dried feces with the coffee berry seeds. I was pretty excited to find a shop that served it, along with toast topped with cheese, chocolate, and condensed milk. Two friends and I split a US$10 cup of kopi luwak. We each took a tentative sip, sat back, and shared looks of confusion.

Part of the problem is that the coffee is served with the grounds still in it, so the texture of dust on liquid was mighty distracting. Once you get past that, we tentatively put it out there that the coffee is maybe a little smoother, but not by much, so not really worth the effort of chasing wild civets for their poo.

Pulau Pramuka

While in Jakarta, I also got sunburnt while on a speedboat to Pulau Pramuka (one of may islands just north of the city), hung out at some cafes that would have fit right into the Mission (except for the fact that they sold pig skin crisps or does that make it more Mission hipster?), and drank probably a gallon of coconut water mixed with orange juice.

The water and sand in Pulau Pramuka was pretty awesome. Not quite Miami heat and not quite Thai white sand beach, but it was really what I needed that day. Rex and I flopped down on our bellies in the water and she taught me how to say "prostitute" and other useful Bahasa Indonesian terms.

And of course there was so much nasi goreng during my Jakarta time. Strangely, the best rendition I had was from a janky cart right outside my hotel. Note the love of the krupuk (rice crackers) and I definitely had that in everything. While we had our nasi goreng, the biggest rat I've ever seen in my life was having a piece of krupuk too. 

Aside from play play, I spent my days again talking to Indonesia auto union leaders. They were as into group pictures as I was, and in the one below, yes, I did make that man wear the rice hat. The women all wanted to know about how awesome it is to be female in the workplace in the United States. 

So much eating. And so much spice. Though it was finally in Jakarta that I had awful food poisoning. Just three days of stomach churning and bowel exploding (you're welcome). I somehow made it through every work day before sprinting for my hotel room. I think it was the "smashed duck" joint that did it.

The above was my only attempt to eat as the Indonesians do, with the right hand only. I get the extra boost of texture from feeling the oily meat, but lord, I was bad at it, getting it all over my shirt.

Salak (left) and mangosteen (right)

One of the best parts of the trip was finding salak and mangosteen. Somehow I coudln't find a single mangosteen in Bangkok, every Thai fruit vendor telling me that it was out of season. FALSE. In Jakarta, mangosteen was aplenty on every street corner, and I definitely had at least a dozen of them a day (though at least on a daily basis, one would be infested with large ants and I would yelp and scream and throw it across the room. Classy.). 

Salak was a stranger taste and if anything, it tastes like a "warm tropical." Try it and you'll see what I mean. Definitely more cute as the "snakefruit" than anything else.

And a ton of tasty kebab. I kinda like how it's done in Southeast Asia, where it's little bits of meat on every stick, and not a big chunk of it. All of it is just an excuse to eat kecap manis.

Before I knew it, it was time to head back to San Francisco, but not before I spent two hours of preboarding getting eaten alive by mosquitos at the airport.

Timor-Leste, Timor Lorosa'e, East Timor

As part of the Timor-Leste Legal Education Project, we spent a week in Dili meeting with students, NGOs, and government officials to vet the legal textbooks we were drafting. It still amuses me that I co-authored a Constitutional Law textbook that has now been translated into Tetum and Portuguese. I'm a published author...in a small country by Indonesia. When we weren't in meetings, the four of us found the time to drive a bit east towards Baucau while listening to Phantom Planet on loop. I know the picture below is overexposed, but I like how the sunset makes the horizon look like the ocean is dimpled and swirling away into a giant drain.

While having squid kabobs on the beach by the light of the cooking fires and playing with the many scruffy dogs that wander among the stalls, we talked about how it was unlikely we'd be back. The flights to Dili used to be once a week, but now are twice a week and still packed with development folk.

I loved running along the beach in the morning and paying a fisherman a few bucks to take us out on the ocean to see the perfect reefs they still have, having a beer on top of a bat-infested lighthouse that overlooks the coastline, and just walking among the strange roots of a mangrove tree along a pristine white beach. Gorging myself on the breakfast fruit was a delight in the mornings, as was playing Indian poker in an Australian bar overlooking the ocean. I turned on Grindr just for shits and giggles once, and aside from the one other Gay in the Village (Australian) who I'd seen running in the mornings too, the closest gay folk (with smartphones) were in Darwin, Australia, some six hundred miles away.

I spent a while trying to track down some areca nut and betel leaf before the two of us who were interested came across it a few hours before our flight out of Dili. Apparently the Timorese consider it a low-class lady's activity, so it was generally confusing why we would want some of this. The combination of areca nut slices, betel leaf, and lime creates a bright red juice in your mouth that stains EVERYTHING and also gives you a quick stimulant kick. I was awful at the process, burning myself with the lime, drooling red juice on my shirt, and not getting much of the kick (around three minutes of jittery feelings). 

I then spent about twenty minutes brushing my teeth to no avail and it wasn't until we got to Singapore that I didn't have pink teeth. We debated briefly whether or not it would be okay to take a betel leaf home with us since the Singaporeans just don't play when it comes to drug smuggling.